From
The Economist;
the Brits talk about doing more wth less:
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Britain’s army chief fears war may come sooner than anyone thinks
Could the army cope without more money and troops?
The hall of Church House, nestled next to Westminster Abbey, is full of pious exhortations to peace and love. On July 22nd-23rd it was filled with military officers debating how to kill people more efficiently. General Sir Roly Walker, who became chief of the general staff in June, was one of those addressing the army’s annual land-warfare conference, run by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a think-tank. In his speech he set out his aim “to double our fighting power in three years and triple it by the end of the decade”.
In the past that might have been seen as a cynical ploy to pitch for more money and troops. Unusually, General Walker said he was not asking for either. Instead his plan reflects a fear that war might come sooner than anyone thinks. General Walker sees 2027-28 as a moment in which Russian rearmament, China’s threat to Taiwan and Iran’s nuclear ambitions might come together in a “singularity”. (Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of the defence staff and General Walker’s boss, is more relaxed: he argues that Russia would need five years to rebuild its army to the pre-2022 standard, and another five to fix deeper problems.)
Before the war in Ukraine, the British Army’s aim was to modernise slowly in the hope of building a battle-ready force by the early 2030s. That timeline has been shredded. General Walker’s plan is to eke out more combat power from the force at his disposal now. His idea is to create an “internet of military things” in which any sensor (a satellite or drone, say) can funnel data to any weapon, the entire process fuelled by artificial intelligence. “We will sense twice as far, decide in half the time, deliver effects over double the distance with half as many munitions,” he says, pointing to
Ukraine’s military ingenuity.
Sceptics retort that
the army is running on fumes. On July 23rd John Healey, the new defence secretary, reaffirmed Britain’s commitment to offer NATO a corps in any war with Russia—roughly, three divisions’ worth of troops, comprising six combat brigades plus enablers such as engineering and artillery units. That is fanciful. The army currently has around 75,000 regular troops. In April General Sir Nick Carter, an ex-army chief, told Parliament that the army had calculated it would need 82,000 troops just to generate a single “warfighting” division. Manpower is not the only issue. RUSI estimates that deploying a single armoured brigade would absorb 70-80% of the army’s engineering capabilities for crossing rivers or minefields.
“The British Army has been handed a policy commitment by wider government that it is not resourced to deliver,” says Jack Watling, a RUSI expert whose writing has acquired cult status among generals. It is not the army’s place to set policy, he acknowledges. “But the rest of government needs to realise that demanding the impossible is grossly irresponsible.” The idea of a corps is a “fantasy”, says an American general who has worked closely with the British Army. “They could project maybe two understrength brigades.” He suggests that Britain look to the us Marine Corps and do away with tanks entirely in favour of a smaller and lighter force that could “plug in” to an American division.
The task of advising on military priorities will fall to three outsiders undertaking a “root-and-branch” defence review announced by Mr Healey on July 16th. Lord Robertson, a NATO secretary-general in 1999-2003, will take the lead, supported by Sir Richard Barrons, a retired general, and Fiona Hill, a British-American expert on Russia who served in Donald Trump’s national-security council. That may lead to more resources for General Walker. But he isn’t banking on it. ■
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I think General (ret'd) Carter is correct when he suggests that 80,000+ troops are required to "generate" 1 division of 20,000+ soldiers. A full corps - three divisions, 75,000+ soldiers - requires an Army of 250,000 to 350,000 all ranks.
As to using AI to "multiply" combat power: I love the concept but I worry that in most military operations there is a weak link: telecommunications. Most military operations are mobile to a very great or lesser degree. Mobile means radio. I'm to an expert on operations but I do know a whole helluva lot about radio-communication, more than 95% of the population I would guess, and I know how vulnerable it is is to a vast array of "threats" - natural and manmade.
The Economist also worries about
the state of the US military:
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America is not ready for a major war, says a bipartisan commission
The country is unaware of the dangers ahead, and of the costs to prepare for them
General charles “cq” brown, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, America’s top military officer, recently told the Aspen Security Forum, a gathering of the country’s foreign-policy elite, that the nation’s
armed forces were the “most lethal, most respected combat force in the world”. Steely-faced, and to jubilant whoops, he declared: “I do not play for second place.” In reality, America’s military position is eroding. That is the message of a report published on July 29th by a bipartisan commission entrusted by Congress with scrutinising the Biden administration’s national defence strategy (nds), a document published two years ago.
The nds commission was chaired by Jane Harman, a former congresswoman, with Eric Edelman, an undersecretary of defence in the George W. Bush administration, deputising. In 2018 the previous such commission had warned that America “might struggle to win, or perhaps lose, a war against China or Russia”. This time the language is starker. The threats to America, including “the potential for near-term major war”, are the most serious since 1945, it says. The country is both unaware of their extent and unprepared to meet them.
The most serious problem is
China. “We’re at least checkmating China now,” boasted Joe Biden, America’s president, on July 6th. In fact, China is “outpacing” America not only in the size but also the “capability” of its military forces, as well as in defence production, and is probably on track to meet its target of being able to
invade Taiwan by 2027, argues the commission. In
space and cyber, the People’s Liberation Army is “peer- or near-peer-level”.
Russia is a lesser concern but, despite its quagmire in Ukraine, still poses a serious threat. On July 19th Vipin Narang, a senior Pentagon official, confirmed reports that Russia was seeking to place a nuclear weapon in orbit, describing it as a “threat to all of humanity” and “catastrophic for the entire world”. The report says that America should boost its presence in Europe to a full armoured corps, a much larger commitment than exists today, accompanied by enablers such as air defence and aviation, with some of today’s rotational forces, which swap in and out, potentially turned into permanently deployed ones.
Compounding these threats is the increasing political and military alignment between China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, including the transfer of arms, technology and battlefield lessons. That presents “a real risk, if not likelihood,” says the commission, “that conflict anywhere could become a multi-theatre or global war”. In 2018 the Trump administration did away with the previous requirement that the Pentagon be prepared to fight two major wars, including one in Europe and one in Asia, at the same time. Mr Biden’s team stuck to that reduced ambition. The result is that a war in one theatre would stretch America dangerously thin, forcing it to rely on nuclear weapons to compensate.
A conflict would also find America wanting in other respects. “Major war would affect the life of every American in ways we can only begin to imagine,” warns the commission. Cyber-attacks would pound critical infrastructure including power, water and transport. Access to critical minerals for civilian and military industry “would be completely cut off”, they say.
Casualties would far exceed any Western experience in recent memory. Recent simulations by the army show that, in battles involving corps and divisions—larger formations that the army is prioritising over brigades and battalions—casualties ran to 50,000 to 55,000, including 10,000-15,000 killed. The commission does not call for a return to the draft, abandoned in 1973, but hints at it, saying that the all-volunteer force faces “serious questions”.
In response to these problems, the commission makes several recommendations. One is to bolster alliances. On July 28th the Biden administration made a big stride in that regard by announcing the creation of a new “warfighting” headquarters in Japan to command all army, air force and navy forces in the country. Another is to reform the Pentagon, whose procurement, research and development practices are described as “Byzantine”.
A third is to sharply raise defence spending, which is projected to remain flat in real terms for the next five years, despite the previous commission’s recommendation for 3-5% annual real-terms growth. That particular figure is somewhat arbitrary. Nonetheless, the commission urges Congress to revoke existing spending caps, pass a multi-year supplemental budget to beef up the defence industrial base and open the fiscal taps to put defence “on a glide path to support efforts commensurate with the US national effort seen during the Cold War”.
There is something here to irritate everyone. To pay for all this, the report proposes additional taxes and cuts to spending on health care and welfare. Both parties will balk at that. Democrats shy away from more defence spending. Republicans are allergic to more taxes. The defence-policy wonks in Donald Trump’s orbit will like the idea of beefing up the armed forces, but many will recoil at the idea of putting more troops into Europe, rather than Asia.
For the commission, there is little time to waste. “The us public are largely unaware of the dangers the United States faces or the costs…required to adequately prepare,” says the commission. “They do not appreciate the strength of China and its partnerships or the ramifications to daily life if a conflict were to erupt…They have not internalised the costs of the United States losing its position as a world superpower.”■
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Like me, the NDS commission and
The Economist see the CRINKs (
&
) as a major, coordinated threat that requires the US-led West to be able to fight major wars, simultaneously, on at least two fronts.
One sincerely hopes no one looks too closely at the state of Canada's military.
) and Training Command (and RMC and the Staff College) was good place to bury some of them.
